Allagan Flag Colors

[Zanther]

Just wondering, and maybe someone with a bit more lore knowledge can help (unless it's in the Lorebook...then I'll feel dumb lol for missing it) but do we have any idea on what a typical color scheme for Allagan life/flag colors actually are? I'm wanting to change up my char's rp colors more to reflect Allagan but not sure what would even work.

[Marisa]

Man, I can't believe this didn't get any replies. This discussion has great potential.  

 

So far as we know, there doesn't appear to be any official Allagan standard (Crystal Tower would be covered in them if there were) but they definitely have a fondness for blue and gold.   

 

What I think it interesting about this is that national flags have only recently become universal, in both Eorzea and the real world. In fact, the idea of a nation is pretty novel to begin with, although history is littered with the occasional nation-state here and there. For most of civilized history, the world consisted of kingdoms which were the property of their respective kings, who would lease the land out to friends and family. Those people, the nobility, would then sub-lease to the common folk. This wasn't conducive to a national identity, because borders were constantly in flux as monarchs bought, sold, and traded land.   

 

I think the most notable example of an early form of nationalism would be the Roman Republic / Empire. I'd imagine that Greek city-states had at least some national identity, but I don't know a ton about them and I don't think they were huge into what we'd consider a flag (although family heraldry was very common) so I'm going with Rome. Even then, I don't believe the SPQR banner was nearly as widespread as, say, the American flag is today. Heavily used in the military, but probably not something you'd see hung in the local tavern.  

 

So let's hit on the subject of Allag vs. Garlemald, and their key differences (because the game tends to focus on their similarities). If we absolutely had to pick one real-world civilization to pair each empire with (because really they're a combination of many cultures), Garlemald is probably Rome and Allag is probably early kingdom Egypt. Think more pyramid builders, old testament Egyptians, not more modern Cleopatra-era Egyptians. Even the Romans considered them ancient. 

 

So, going off this comparison, we can guess a couple things about Allagan politics. Political theory in Allag, as in the real Egyptian kingdoms, probably hadn't advanced past the point of "Serve me and you get food, or we'll kill you if you don't." Pretty basic reward/punishment structure. Also, Xande owned everything. Everyone else just had the privilege of using Xande's land.  

 

Garlemald, on the other hand, belongs to no single man. Even the Emperor, in theory, lives to serve the nation of Garlemald. It's not just his empire. It's my empire, and your empire too. Sure, many of Garlemald's conquered people are just going along because of the reward/punishment system. But Garlemald has shown that it's reached the nationalist level of political theory. Citizens are supposed to work for the Empire because its the right thing to do. So to create this paradigm, you don't want the face of the Empire to literally be the Emperor's face, because then it just seems like he owns the whole thing. Rather, you need something like the standards of Ishgard's High Houses, but for everyone. If everyone has the exact same family emblem, then logically everyone in the nation must be a single family. From this, you get Garlemald's Ivory flag.  

 

And that's my really long and rambling was of saying that Garlemald has a flag and Allag doesn't.

[Valence]

I didn't answer to that thread because there is not much in the lore covering Allag's form of government or their flag. 

 

I'm not sure I totally agree with your analogy and I believe that it might just be a case of Occam's razor in that no lore about it can also mean a flag actually exists but isn't covered by the lore (yet).

 

I agree that nationalism is not that old IRL for the reasons you presented, but heraldry is, and was widely used as flags since the dawn of humanity. Just with a different meaning behind. And while nationalism as a true doctrine didn't show up until 20th century, actual states started to real form and act as nations as early as late middle ages (especially during the Hundred Years War where the ideology started to appear). Kingdoms like England, France, Spain, etc, all had their flags even in the early middle ages, even if it was more related to the king's heraldry.

 

Overall it's hard to tell, but the Allagan Empire was a true Empire, spanning almost all over the planet at its peak as well as in space, and seemed to boast a big amount of corporate and military labs and scientific complexes (like Azys Lla or Seal Rock), and while it seemed to work more as a very autocratic regime backed up by an overblown military, they still had an active population and a certain amount of national culture of active military service.

[Marisa]

You make a good argument, but I have to point out again that we've been inside of the Crystal Tower, seat of power in the Allagan Empire, and saw nothing resembling what we would consider a flag. That leads me to believe that the Allagans simply didn't have one. Heraldry, possibly. Probably, even. But something they could point to and say "That is the visual representation of all Allag and it's peoples", I have to doubt it. And maybe that's just a cultural thing. I mean, there's no natural law saying that the concept of "unity" is represented by a flag. Somebody just made that decision at some point and it stuck.

[Valence]

That's possible. Or maybe the dev team didn't think about it, or forgot. Or deemed it not important...

 

I think it could be a good question to ask to the lore team someday.

[Andromeda]

From a political theory perspective, by the Allagan Empire's fall a flag no longer served a purpose, really. Flags are used to represent an identity and identity is a relative thing. That Canadians exist gives meaning to being Italian. But by the end of their era, Allagan was the state of being for everyone that wasn't Meracydian.

 

Flags also are used to boost morale, but by the fall of Allag there were almost no organic soldiers and few organic laborers. These classes that often rally around the morale boost of their trials being for the good of all just didn't exist anymore.

 

I would say that Meracydia might've had a flag, because they needed symbols of an identity distinct from Allag, but Allag had no need to differentiate itself from anything. People were Allagan. Allagans were people. Things outside this weren't really worth considering.

 

In this way, Allag isn't comparable to an ancient power, but a future one. Allag was very nearly a Type One Civilization, which has never existed in our world so is mostly speculative. We just have political philosophy and theory to project what one might be like and, in this case, why it might not bother with flags.

[hologramblue]

The aesthetic of Allagan technology is effectively its standard, so far as I've assumed. The TRON thing is very distinctive, and the biggest point of national pride that can be gleaned from what's left of them (Crystal Tower, Fractal Continuum, etc) was their use of advanced technology, quality of life resulting from technology, etc.

 

Allagan colors are unnecessary glowy bits.